MY OFFICE — First impressions can be very important, and James Harden made a terrific one in his first appearance as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers as the team beat the Sacramento Kings 132-126 on Saturday night.
The game against the Kings provided a glimpse at two certainties for the Cavs. It gave a peek at what this team is capable of becoming if everything goes correctly over the 29 remaining games of the season. It also is evidence that there’s a lot that needs to be accomplished in those 29 games.
This team, and head coach Kenny Atkinson, will need to spend the remainder of the regular season in an interesting place. There’s no way to know exactly what will work the best for the Cavs without some experimentation. Atkinson is going to be forced to play different combinations to find out exactly what groups can elevate the team to the heights it should reach.
Because of where the Cavs are in the standings — currently in fourth place, 1.5 games behind third and 2.5 games behind second — those experimentations cannot come at the cost of winning basketball games. That’s why the most important thing to come out of Saturday night was that the Cavs won a game for the 15th time in their past 20 tries.
The second-most important thing from Saturday was the way they won the game, with Harden and Donovan Mitchell figuring things out and taking over in the fourth quarter. Cleveland’s new All-NBA duo had 32 of the team’s 39 fourth quarter points, including each of the final 16. It was a showcase of two stars having their feet put to the fire in the closing moments of a close game and finding a way to get the job done.
In the fourth quarter, Harden scored 15 of his 23 points on a perfect 4-of-4 shooting, with three of those attempts coming from 3-point range. He also knocked down all four free throw attempts that he took in the final 22 seconds of regulation to ice the game. Mitchell had 17 points in the quarter, connecting on six of the nine shoots that he took.
